Middlesex face a near-impossible task to get promotion in the County Championship.

Middlesex face a near-impossible task to get promotion in the County Championship, writes Jon Batham.

That's the candid admission of Toby Radford ahead of the four-day clash with Derbyshire which began on Tuesday.

It's a game the head coach and his team started in seventh place - 35 points adrift of the top two Worcestershire and Warwickshire.

The Twenty20 cup winners have struggled to reproduce their one-day form in the longer game, where promotion had been the number one target at the start of the season.

Radford admitted failure to convert winning positions on the road, against Essex at Chelmsford and Gloucestershire at Bristol, had come back to haunt his side.

He said: "It's not impossible for us to get promotion, but we'd probably need to win every game now to go up. "You look back to the game at Chelmsford, where we should have

won, and then not taking the last wicket against Gloucester, and think where we might have been if we'd won those games."

Staines & Laleham 164-7 (42.2 overs) KENSINGTON 33-0 (10.4 overs) Match abandoned KENSINGTON were half an hour away from a thundering win before the rain gods wrecked their Sunday afternoon. After the original fixture against Horsley was jettisoned because the Surrey side were unable to raise a team, Staines stepped manfully in to the breach.

Hammad Rishad then stamped his size elevens up and down his bowling run-up to reduce the hosts to a meagre score.

The KCC medium pacer's figures of 4-21 in 10 overs set the pattern for Matt Marshall, Corbett Chellew and San Gore, who all slowed down the Staines scoring rate.

Tim Keleher and Rohan Gosh started the KCC innings cautiously with 15 apiece. But were beginning to get into

their stride when at 6.10pm precisely the heavens opened leaving an inform and padded up Tabrez Khan gazing mournfully up at the leaden sky as he slowly put his bat away. MIDDLESEX LEAGUE DIVISION TWO SHEPHERD'S BUSH 1pt-Twickenham 1pt Match abandoned NOT A ball was bowled in Bush's attempt on Saturday to put distance between themselves and the rest at the top of the league.

The only consolation was no-one else played either. Bush are away to North London this Saturday.

PADDINGTON 153 (40 overs)

South Hampstead - did not bat Match abandoned ON A steamy wicket Paddington did OK to get to 153 - although 20 or so more runs would have been a competitive target on a difficult surface. Ralph Cabrell top scored on 29, with Steve Bunning (25) and brother Chris Bunning (24) offering decent support before the rain decided matters.